


The Love Letter

by Kalya_Lee



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: Though it did not seem so at the time and does not always seem so now, my own misfortunes do not begin and end with the death of Beatrice Baudelaire. Evidence for this may be found in the simple fact that, while she is dead, I, at least at time of writing, am not.





	The Love Letter

**Author's Note:**

> More netflix-canon than book canon; spoilers through the end of The End, a phrase which, here, feels somewhat redundant.

It is folly to make generalisations of any kind regarding stories, which, like people and ice cream, come in an infinite number of varieties – a fact which is, by and large, to the benefit of both the stories and the people, though not so much in the case of the ice cream. Nevertheless, over the years many very foolish people have resolved to try.

One result of this is a certain theory regarding what is known as “Freytag’s pyramid”, an odd literary shape whose secrets have quite possibly been explained to you in a classroom some time ago by an undoubtedly bored and exceedingly long-suffering English teacher. If this is the case, you will most likely already be familiar with such terms as _climax_ and _rising action_ , as well as their associated concepts, such as _beginning_ , _middle_ , and _end_ , and I will therefore avoid wasting both my time and yours in defining them again, and shall instead choose to trust in your capabilities, a word which here means your education, your memory, and, if both should fail, your ability to google.

I refer to these concepts in order to describe yet another type of folly, namely the folly of imagining that life, like a story, may or must follow a smooth narrative trajectory. In some ways this belief is sensible; life does, after all, have a quite easily definable beginning, middle, and end, though this division remains somewhat unsatisfying given that, like a snake or a badly-constructed hamburger, one’s life tends to have a somewhat brief end and beginning, accompanied by rather a lot of middle. What life does not tend to have, however, is a climax, a moment of destiny, a singular instance which defines one’s story and from which, as the saying goes, it appears to be all downhill. The belief that the Baudelaires’ troubles began with the deaths of their parents, for instance, is as false as it is tempting, and so too is the rather less tempting belief that this event was the _end_ of their misfortunes, evidence for which fact may be found in any one of a large number of books. Should you wish to read these books, they are most likely available at your nearest bookstore, as they have recently come into quite high demand, though I cannot imagine why.

What this means is that, though it did not seem so at the time and, if I am more than usually honest with myself, does not always seem so now, my own misfortunes do not begin and end with the death of Beatrice Baudelaire. Evidence for this may be found in the simple fact that, while she is dead, I, at least at time of writing, am not.

One might, of course, choose to ignore all that I have said up to this point and persist, rather discourteously, in searching for the climax of my life; were that the case, one might find a likely origin for my misfortunes in a certain night at the opera, a night full of numerous unfortunate and regrettable circumstances – a phrase which, here, refers to several actions, some of them performed by me, which hurt a number of people rather badly. I had, of course, hurt people before, both deliberately and by accident, and have undoubtedly hurt people since; it is an unpleasant experience with unpleasant results, and if you have not tried it I would not recommend that you start. Unfortunately, the experience of hurting others, like that of breathing air or watching a movie featuring gun violence and at least one explosion, seems exceedingly difficult to avoid, at least in certain parts of the world; and it is likely that, by the time you reach adulthood, you will have had at least one encounter with all three.

The act of causing hurt has a number of possible consequences, including but not limited to the damaging of cherished relationships, a crippling sense of guilt, and several small and large fires; it would not, therefore, be unreasonable to trace more than a few of my more grievous and painful losses to that night. Yet it would be inaccurate to lay the blame for such widespread destruction on nothing but a few stray acts of violence and thievery, or indeed to blame such acts on a single moment of poor judgment in the life of a juvenile writer – just as it would be absurd to blame an earthquake solely on an overenthusiastic piece of drilling equipment, or the effects of centuries of systemic discrimination and injustice on the rantings of one or two imbecilic persons on the internet. 

One might choose instead, therefore, to trace my sorrows back through each and every situation which caused or enabled the events of that tragic night. Such an attempt might turn up a list of moments including an accident at a sugar factory, the delivery of several small and deadly projectiles to two or more addresses, numerous family fights, several uneventful yet traumatic years at a boarding school, an afternoon of inaccurate measurement-taking at a tailor’s shop, six or seven secret missions, and one rather delectable lunch. These moments, while of no small significance to me, seem however both too numerous and too uneventful to be properly called a _climax_ – unless one were making a particularly boring art-house film, or engaging in extremely underwhelming sex.

Many have suggested, especially in my youth, that my troubles began the day my parents decided to name me _Lemony_ ; I must concede, however reluctantly, that those people have something of a point. To be given a name like Lemony is a fate I would wish only on a small and select group of persons, none of whom are still living; it is also, as I have recently learned, a fate which Violet Baudelaire very narrowly and very luckily escaped at birth. In many ways her lot would have been worse than mine, as I was supposed to be dead at the time, and to be named for a deceased third party is often, as you might well know, a source of great melancholy. It is a kind of sadness which is difficult to describe, but is perhaps best likened to the feeling of having your singing talents praised through a number of increasingly patronising comparisons to Bob Dylan, or of having an older relation, in a moment of thoughtlessness which he will no doubt regret for years to come, remark in an over-emotional tone of voice that you look so much like your mother.

Those who identify the moment of my naming as the beginning of my troubles are, as I have said, very nearly correct, but not for the reasons stated above – instead, they are nearly correct because of the proximity of that moment to said troubles’ true origin, namely the moment of my birth. This moment, of course, cannot be said to be the climax of my life either. And it is at this point that I shall reveal what you have, no doubt, already guessed, which is that I have so far been using the word ‘climax’ fallaciously – a word which can mean many things but which here means deliberately misrepresenting the definitions of various literary terms for rhetorical effect. For, of course, a climax is a turning point, but it need not always mark a turn from good to bad, or from joy to repeated inconvenience; it may also mark other turns, such as one from boredom to excitement, or from grief to healing, or from comfort to profound instability, or from depression to acceptance. It is not, in other words, true that it is all downhill from a climax; it might, instead, be rather uphill, or perfectly even, but on a different stretch of road.

Life, therefore, resembles not so much a pyramid but a path: one with multiple turns in multiple directions, made of actions and consequences and consequent actions, all of which create trouble and some of which resolve it. Such a road is difficult to navigate, but it is never boring – or, rather, it is often boring, but not for very long, and then it is quite rapidly climbing, or a sharp drop down a cliff. There have been many moments in my life which I regret, and many origins for a great number of dismaying circumstances that I would rather have avoided, but none have single-handedly or permanently determined my direction of travel – which is, after all, often said to be somewhat lacking in direction, unless that direction is ‘onwards’.         

All this by way of answer to your last letter, dearest Bea, and while you may wonder why I have written such a quantity of unpleasantness in response to a simple question, I might justify myself by saying not only that a man whose life’s work consists of thirteen hefty novel-shaped books might reasonably be said to love the sound of his own voice, but also that your question is not, in fact, very simple at all. It is, rather, as you yourself have put it, quite difficult – a word by which, I take it, you mean painful to ask and more painful to answer, yet perhaps most painful were neither thing done, or at least attempted.

You say that you have found the world to be a cruel place, full of oppressors who oppress and sufferers who suffer, authorities who fail and uncles who will not be concise. You say that you see good people hurt and this hurts you, that you encounter bigotry and prejudice at every turn, that you feel unsafe and yet safer than many others and that it is this thought, above all, which you find frightening – that beyond your suffering there are many more who are in pain, people you love and people you do not love and people whom you do not know and yet whose well-being you fear for, for so few of them deserve to hurt as so many of them do.

I will not tell you you are wrong, for that would be a lie, and I wish neither to betray your trust in me nor to insult your not-inconsiderable intelligence. I will instead say that you are perfectly correct, and that your lot is indeed a sad one; for it is true that you have lost many people you have loved, and many people you have not had the chance to love, which is in a way a greater loss because it is more difficult to quantify. It is true that you love the family you have now, which is its own kind of misfortune, not least because families, however loving, are complicated – a phrase which here means exactly what it says.

It is true that the world is an unkind place, and that life is often, if you will pardon the expression, little more than a series of unfortunate events, and while I wish I could tell you not to cry for these things, I cannot, for crying is the lot of all good and decent people. I will not tell you, either, how you might change the world yourself, for I was very young and foolish back when I thought I knew, and I undoubtedly had the wrong answer, and at any rate I do not remember it now.  

I will instead say this: that it is not, despite all evidence to the contrary, very difficult to keep a heart beating; for that is what it wants, more than anything, to do. And it is not, despite even more overwhelming contrary evidence, all that difficult to keep a heart loving, for that is its second-favourite thing. You ask me how you will survive this world; the answer is, darling, that you will not, as no one ever does. This does not, however, prevent you from being what you are: namely very clever, very kind, and very difficult to kill.

I will instead say this: that I loved a woman once, and she is now dead, but I am not. And I loved my family once, and they are dead, but I am not. I loved an organisation which I have largely outlived, and a world and a city which I so far have not but which I have, like you perhaps, sadly ceased to love. Each loss is an ending, but no loss need be the end of you – not even the greatest of losses, such as that of a lover, or of an election. I know this, Beatrice, for I also know that I am not any stronger than you are; in fact in many ways I am weaker, being older and therefore more prone to certain kinds of mistakes. You, on the other hand, are young, and one day perhaps you will be as foolish as I was when I believed that I could change the world; and then, perhaps, you will be right.

This I believe, though I cannot guarantee it; what I can guarantee is something I once learned and then forgot, namely that while there is no end to sorrows there is also no end to joy – a fact which, once forgotten, was re-learned by me one drizzling day not five years ago, when I met a certain young woman in a certain old diner for the very first time. At the time I had believed that there was no one living by whom I was loved; I was glad, as I still am, that I was wrong. It is for this reason and many others that I have thus far survived, just as you will no doubt continue to survive for a while yet, being as you are equipped not only with an excellent mind and a better heart but also with a number of people who love you –  a phrase which here means, among other things, three young people to whom you are the world, as well as one man whose every word is, if not once and always, then now and forevermore:

For Beatrice –  
Bruised, beloved, bravely breathing.

Your most loving (and most living) relation,  
Lemony Snicket


End file.
